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the area should stand by themselves in one side, but they will return to their own roots. The
effort to find the root of their life is the most basic strategy for the people in the Pacific area
to find themselves, be it by adopting or adapting or even making new creative adaptations
of the tradition they have. Something existing right now can be the creativity of something
foreign that was brought by the conquerors or something the discoverers happened to
deliver. An anthropological study should be directed to (i) reviews of cultural models, (ii)
reflection of the changes in culture, and (iii) analysis of cultural products (creativity based
on new input from the west). These three things really help the Pacific people to see more
clearly what social behavior should be done (Keesing, 1993).
A anthropology researcher cannot please everybody, including the local reader. But
he has to abide by academic standards and ethical demands. The raison d’être for an
anthropologist is an action to keep his distance with his own understanding of culture. His
knowledge will be brighter when a researcher avoids comparing his own knowledge about
the original culture and the culture he was studying with the understanding of the culture.
Anthropologically, life in Oceania should be reflected from the perspective of the
renewal and changes from the west to the region. In 1967, Godelier got time to research
PNG on its (i) the changes of social behavior and (ii) the changes in the way of thinking
of the local people. He started from Baruya which was found by Australia in 1951 and
occupied until 1960. In 1975, Papua New Guinea got its independence and Baruya became
part of Papua New Guinea (Godelier, 1993).
What happened in Baruya is not different from that in the Solomon Islands, which
according to Keesing was dominated by a west that never pays attention to traditions
and the local people’s heritage. The root is the contextual study that is not planned well,
so to cover the drawbacks, a number of projects to develop the economics of the region
were carried out. But this approach did not work because the feasibility studies about
the potential of the people’s life context were not heeded. It turns out that all kinds of
economic efforts did not make the Solomon Islands become the focus, and those ordinary
people only become tools and experienced many disadvantages (Keesing, 1993).
The political patterns of the western economy dominates the changes and development
in almost all of the Pacific area, which then spread to Micronesia and Polynesia. The
occupancy of culture is done by dominating the people’s economy and the countries in
Pacific. Compare it with the Melanesian Spearhead Group that at first dealt with economy
but then shifted to politics. A newspaper in the Solomon Islands, the Solomon Star, talked
about it in the 20th meeting of the Melanesian Spearhead Group in Honiara, June 23-27,

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